When jail is not the right answer

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Putting some offenders in prison may do more
harm than good, as two recent cases illustrate.

The criminal justice system is so often under attack for getting it wrong on sentencing that it is worth noting those occasions on which it gets it demonstrably right. The trial of Paul Jedson appears to be a case in point.

Almost nine years ago, Jedson - then aged 16 - attacked his parents with an iron bar and a pocketknife as they lay in bed. Both his mother and father suffered serious injuries. His mother was in a coma for eight days after the attack, suffering multiple skull fractures. His father endured head, neck and chest injuries, later losing an eye as a result.

At the time of the attack at his parents' Croydon home, Jedson - then known as Justin Grace - had problems with alcohol and drug abuse and had been abused by a man known to him. After the attack, Jedson fled to Adelaide and changed his name. He spent some time living on the streets before entering a relationship with a woman with whom he now has a five-year-old child.

The remarkable aspect of the Jedson case was the willingness of the victims - the assailant's parents - to forgive him. Their assumption during the more than seven years that Jedson had been missing was that he was dead.

When police finally tracked him down, his remorse, coupled with their relief that he was alive, was such as to convince his parents that extracting a severe punishment would be counterproductive. Judge Bernard Teague agreed and fixed a three-year suspended jail term on charges of intentionally causing serious injury to his parents, to which Jedson had pleaded guilty. His parents both gave evidence on his behalf.

Jedson's case recollects that of Silvia Nicole Ciach, the motorist who killed a cyclist on Portarlington Road in December 2001. She admitted she had been text-messaging on her mobile telephone while driving. The victim's parents supported a non-custodial sentence for a remorseful Ciach, who changed her plea to guilty after the committal hearing.

The victim's father said the guilty pleas saved a lot of heartache for both sides. Again such compassion is rare in a criminal justice system that remains geared to having winners and losers and to extracting punishment over and above reconciliation or rehabilitation.

Sometimes a retributive custodial sentence is not the right path. It serves neither the interests of the victims nor the offender. It does society a disservice by placing further burdens on an already stretched prison system. Those who call loudly for mandatory custodial sentences for a range of crimes should study Jedson's and Ciach's cases carefully. They point to a different path and to the fact that the criminal justice system can work to produce outcomes that both satisfy those involved and serve a broader social purpose.